Using PS Vita® Hardware Versus Software Platforms

Wwise has two distinct platform bases for PS Vita. They are based on different approaches for mixing with PS Vita:

PS Vita HW - The Wwise hardware mixing pipeline uses a Vita-specific chip that handles sound compression decoding and effects.
PS Vita SW - The Wwise software mixing pipeline works like it does with all other platforms; it does not support the Vita-specific chip.

The Wwise software and hardware mixing pipelines for PS Vita each have their advantages and disadvantages. To help in making an informed decision, the following points should be taken into consideration.

CPU Usage

The number of active voices and Effect plug-ins are the two major culprits for CPU usage. Reducing them will save on your CPU, so the following factors must be considered.

Codec Decompression - Using ATRAC9 or VAG on Vita presents different issues for the chosen Wwise mixing pipeline. VAG decompression is only available through the hardware mixing pipeline, while ATRAC9 is available both through the Wwise software and hardware mixing pipelines. However, Wwise's hardware mixing version uses ATRAC9 more efficiently; the software mixing version has a larger overhead and a limited voice count.

Wwise Vita Effect Plug-ins - In the software mixing pipeline, all the standard Wwise plug-ins are available, thereby offering numerous effects to designers. In the hardware mixing pipeline, however, Wwise only has five Vita Effect plug-ins. This results in savings for CPU usage, although it also limits designers.

	Note
	Wwise Vita Effect plug-ins were developed by Sony for use on the PS Vita. Learn more about these in the Vita Effect Plug-ins section of the Help documentation. For greater detail, please visit the Sony Developer Network for Vita.

Porting

When porting projects to or from Vita, such as from PS4® to PS Vita or PS Vita to iOS, the software mixing pipeline keeps most if not all of your work. However, the hardware mixing pipeline, which has a different set of Effects, will require you to redo a lot of your work.

Wwise Hardware Mixing Pipeline Limitations

In addition to supporting only a limited number of Effects, the Wwise hardware mixing pipeline does not support Sample accurate transitions for ATRAC9 or VAG. The Interactive Music Engine is dependent on using either Sample accurate Transitions or Sample accurate Seeking; but, Sample accurate seeking is not supported for either the software or hardware mixing pipeline on ATRAC9 and VAG. So, in practical terms, the Interactive Music engine is only available through the software mixing pipeline.

	Note
	Sample accurate Transitions and the Interactive Music engine are both fully supported through other codecs like PCM and Vorbis.

Conclusion

In summary, the Wwise hardware pipeline for PS Vita can save you on CPU usage. However, it could creatively limit your designers and largely remove the savings in time and effort gained through the standard software pipeline's capacity to easily port a project from one platform to another. In deciding on which approach is best, you have to weigh the relative importance of these elements for each project.

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